Top Texas leaders acted without legal authority when they claimed to be moving forward with implementing the state’s controversial voter ID law, a veteran Supreme Court watcher said today.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Secretary of State John Steen both said after the Supreme Court struck down the core of the country’s voting rights law Tuesday that the state would begin enforcing laws requiring photo identification for voters.

But Lyle Denniston, a legal scholar who has covered the Supreme Court for 55 years, said the Texas voter ID law cannot take effect immediately.

“This is one of the dumbest statements I’ve heard from an attorney general in a long time,” Denniston, a contributor to the widely read SCOTUSBlog, said.

The state’s voter ID law — as well as any new redistricting plan — cannot be unilaterally implemented, he said.

“[Abbott] has a judgment against him, and that judgment has to be removed before the law can be enforced,” Denniston said. “He cannot do anything while its pending before the Supreme Court unless he withdraws his own petition, and he’s obviously not going to do that.”

The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday invalidated a key piece of the Voting Rights Act that required nine states, including Texas, to seek consent from the federal government before changing voting procedures.

The justices declared the formula that determined which states and districts fall under federal scrutiny unconstitutional. Until Congress approves new metrics for the Voting Rights Act, those states can freely modify their own voting policies.

In wake of that ruling, several Texas officials pledged enforce the voter ID bill, which a federal court barred the state from enforcing last August.

But Denniston said that case was not immediately settled Tuesday, because the court struck down a section of the law unrelated to the Texas challenge. He called the attorney general “legally ignorant” for thinking he could advance the laws without the court’s ruling.

Susan Frederick, a legal expert with the National Conference for State Legislatures, said she expects more states to start advancing voting policies that had previously been blocked by the federal government. She said any previous legal decisions that were not invalidated by Tuesday’s ruling would still need to be considered.

“For any state to be able to move forward with legislative that is previously adjudicated or dealt with in state court, [officials] certainly have to go back and make sure it didn’t fly afoul of the state constitution or any other currently valid federal law,” she said.

She said there would continue to be uncertainty on Voting Rights Act provisions until Congress drafts new requirements — unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“What you’re asking House members from those impacted states to do is to go back into their own jurisdictions, and say, ‘oh well I’ve got counties that should really have these enforcement,’” she said. “It seems to be that it would be very difficult to go back and start from scratch.”